Summary: Kamilah is worried about the consequences of Samantha’s involvement with Adrian and Jax and shares a dark memory of her past to set as an example.
A tired Adrian walks into the main room of the cabin in the woods as Kamilah opens the bag of groceries provided by the Clanless to organize things and keep her mind occupied, but there is one single idea she can’t shake off. They’ve threatened to kill her just a few days ago, now their leader not only helped them rescue Adrian but also arranged a getaway car fully stocked with useful supplies.
She peers at Samantha gathering the ingredients to prepare grilled cheese sandwiches. Jax wouldn’t help them just because considering the possibility of an alliance if they manage to survive the war against Vega and the other clan leaders. And he did take his time trying to coax Samantha to stay there. Kamilah can’t help but wonder. “Samantha?”
“Yeah?”
“What’s the nature of your relationship with Jax?”
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me. We have a lot at stake here and I need to know in case we need to build new alliances or gather witnesses.”
“Oh…” Samantha frowns.
“So?”
“I don’t know… We haven’t talked about that yet,” Samantha looks down, assembling the bread and slices of white cheddar and American cheese to avoid eye contact.
Kamilah raised an eyebrow at her. “What about Adrian?”
“Adrian? What does he have to do with whatever relationship I have with Jax?”
“Don’t play dumb with me. I know what’s going on between the two of you. But someone needs to be rational here since neither of you can,” she hisses and Samantha slumps on a chair. “I’m not slut shaming you. You’re free to do what you want with your life and your body, but you’re not dealing with high school jocks here. You’re getting involved with two vampires. I don’t know about Jax, but Adrian isn’t exactly a polyamorous enthusiast.”
“Do you think they’d fight over me?”
“There’s a possibility. You need to talk to them and sort this out.”
“But what if I don’t know where to start?”
“How can you not know?” Kamilah inquiries, but Samantha just squirms on her seat, “You like both of them and you don’t have a clue about who to choose, do you?”
Samantha shakes her head. Kamilah pinches the bridge of her nose, but her expression softens as she sees Samantha wiping a tear quietly. “Look, I didn’t mean to call you out. You’re young, both of them are more interesting than most of the men of your age and it’s not like I don’t understand what it feels like to be torn between two attractive people, but it can be dangerous. Adrian is powerful, Jax is ill-tempered and you don’t know if they’re willing to share.”
“I know that, but– ” she plays with a lock of her blond hair. “I didn’t plan for it to happen. I didn’t know I would end up liking them both.”
“I can see that, but have you ever thought about how you feel?”
“No…”
“Samantha, this is bad. We’re in the middle of a vampire war here and we can’t afford to have a clan leader and the clanless leader fighting over the same girl. It weakens us.”
“Yeah… Do you think I should talk to them soon? I mean, like… now?” She tilted her head to the hallway that leads to Adrian’s room.
“If the subject makes up, yes. But be careful. Regardless of what might happen to Adrian after the serum begins to act in his body, you don’t want to be in the middle of the crossfire.” Samantha nodded, then began to chew a fingernail looking at Kamilah. “What?”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You’re chewing your nails and staring. You want to know something.”
“Does living 2000 years makes you an expert on body language?“
“Among other things,” a ghost of a smile dawns on Kamilah’s face, but she quickly brushes it off. “What do you want to know?”
“You said you know how it feels to be torn between two attractive people and I was wondering how it was for you and how did you solve it. I mean, I don’t want to pry, I just need someone’s advice.”
“Alright, but make the grilled cheese while I talk. The only human in a three miles radius here is you, Adrian has priority on feeding and I gotta save some energy for whatever happens.”
Samantha promptly stands up, grabs a frying pan and makes the fire in the antique stove while Kamilah sits down and pours a glass of wine. “At the beginning, there wasn’t this idea of exclusivity. I mean, marriage was simply a contract binding men and women to produce heirs, make alliances and keep properties among them. I was married once, but I couldn’t get pregnant anymore, so my husband had concubines and I had lovers. It was consensual, it didn’t have complications and we mutually respected each other’s decisions.”
“Can I ask what happened to your husband?” Samantha queries as she turns a sandwich over in the frying pan.
“He had a war injury and didn’t make it,” Kamilah looks down at her glass, her long manicured finger running in circles on the border of the glass as memories darken her features. She takes a sip of the wine and resumes to speak. “After the ascension of the Catholic Church, ‘the sanctity of marriage” and rules about betrayal, things became complicated. Extraconjugal relationships were turned into this pointless taboo when clearly it’s unnatural for humans to be monogamous.”
“You think so?” Samantha turns around as she takes the last sandwich to heat.
“Do I need to rub the reason why we’re having this conversation on your face?” Kamilah retorted.
“Kay… point taken. But you still didn’t talk about what happened you were in a love triangle.”
“It was during the Renaissance. There was this nobleman of French Court in the town I lived. He was so brave and witty. He had this ability to make everything in life an adventure, our encounters were thrilling, steamy. My partner at the time didn’t mind if I had other lovers, but he got particularly jealous of this one. One day, he said he would go hunting and when he came back, he brought my lover’s corpse with him. He was drained out.”
Samantha stares wide-eyed at Kamilah, holding the plate with sandwichs mid-air, unsure of what to say. “Kamilah, I’m so sorry…”
“It’s fine, Samantha. It was a really long time ago,” Kamilah gives her a weak smile as Samantha sits down, putting the grilled cheese in the middle of the table. “I’m not saying this is going to happen with you too, but I hope my story serves a lesson to you. Dangerous things can happen when you try to toy with other people’s feeling, but it can be far worse to toy with vampires.”
“But I didn’t know I was toying with anyone. I still don’t know for sure. I enjoy teasing and I was impulsive and reckless… I didn’t realize I’d actually mess with their feelings. Or with mine, for that matter. I didn’t think men who had lived for over a century would fall for those silly tricks,” she frowned.
“Well, I guess that’s exactly the point. At the end of the day, they’re just men. They always fall,” Kamilah shrugged and grabbed a sandwich, taking a small bite. “This is really good.”
“Thanks. Do you think Adrian would like to have a sandwich too?”
“It won’t hurt to ask,” Kamilah gives her a reassuring smile and Samantha picks up the plate and heads to the hallway, towards Adrian’s room.
